Warlock
Basic Information The Warlock class is a power mage who uses staffs and orbs to inflict high magic damage. Whilst this class is similar to the ranger class, the Warlock favors magic over the use of a bow. This character also has several efficient spells to use in combat, making this class a highly favored class. It has been discovered that the Warlock is in fact the highest DPS class by far. This high DPS can be achieved via a technique dubbed 'The Warlock's Dance', and the DPS can be boosted farther via the usage of Skills. The Warlock's Dance To properly explain this technique the universal process for a class's attack will need to be examined at a somewhat technical level. All character attacks have three main phases: the Warmup stage, the Firing Point and the Cooldown Stage. The Warmup Stage is the animation/delay from the moment an attack cycle is started (i.e. from the point the player presses the Attack button when their character is in range of a target) to the Firing Point. The Firing Point is the moment where either a Melee attack hits the target or a ranged attack is fired; all ranged attacks act as infinite-range guided missile the moment they are fired. The Cooldown Stage is animated delay after the Firing Point up to the end of the overall attack cycle. The combined time of the Warmup Stage, Firing Point and Cooldown Stage makes up one standard attack of a character, and if the player simply presses the attack button and stands by the character will go through this cycle automatically at their standard rate which is based off of the equipped weapon's speed and any buffs that may be in effect. A character can move during the Warmup and Cooldown stages, which effectively resets/cancels that stage. If a character moves during the Warmup stage their attack is cancelled and they will not hit. The special part about Warlock's basic attacks instantly enter the Firing stage, the Cooldown is the only stage that delay the attack rate. The Warlock has an almost nonexistent Warmup animation; nearly all of the attack cycle delay is the cooldown stage; using an Orb only adds to the cooldown. If a Warlock attacks, then immediately moves in any direction the moment the bolt is in the air, the Cooldown is reset and he can manually fire again much earlier than he would be able to normally. Doing this fire-move-fire-move procedure rapidly and constantly can more than triple the Warlock's attack rate, pushing it to potentially more than double the standard rate of an Assassin's dagger, regardless of weapon used. Seasoned "dancers" can get their firing rate approaching 5 shots per second. In contrast, the Ranger's attack cycle is mainly Warmup; therefore this cannot be done with a Ranger. The melee classes all have similar issues, plus given their short melee range the steps would often move them outside of striking distance and add a delay for the character to get back in range. The Warlock's Dance takes a bit of practice to get used to, but once mastered you will be in a very unique position on how to fight. The Warlock's Dance combined with the skills Summon Bard, Bard of Destruction, Blood Revenge with all 10 stacks, Blade of Darkness and Lightning of Hell, while wearing the highest-damage-per-shot Orb you can find and equip for your level increases DPS to insanely high levels. The downfall of this strategy is that it doesn't give powerful burst hits, which means that it would take a relatively longer time to execute high-leveled enemies, which would give you more time under aggro against ranged enemies. It is worth noticing that you can get under aggro more easily against higher-leveled enemies, and their damage is stronger than melee enemies, which will make the long-term process very health consuming. Thus, it is highly recommended to use Plate armor and to Summon Bard liberally for the defense boost (as well as Bard of Destruction). By the way , if you have a warlock or priest that wields orb or staff on you team ,you can acheive Blitzing by rapid-tapping the head of the main character ( the one on the up-right corner) Blitzing, aka Ghostly Owns's TLDR version of 'The Warlock's Dance' I first discovered this on a Priest (which is able to use staffs and orbs) on my own. Basically, wield an orb or staff, and then rapidly move then auto attack; the movement cancels the lag of the auto attack. Doing this fast enough results in a DPS higher than any other class, bar Priest, which is also capable of this. Combine this with certain skills like Blood Revenge, Blade of Darkness and Lightning of Hell, and you get a class with unrivaled DPS. Unfortunately, this does nothing for defense, and come endgame, just using this will not let you get very far. I don't like the name of 'The Warlock's Dance' - it's a bad name, and it's not even right - the Priest class is capable of this as well. I'd prefer the name 'Blitzing'; it's simpler, succinct and captures the essence of the tactic - rushing the enemy with overwhelming force. Please do not edit this section of the page. Starting Stats Abilities Primary *Touch of Agony - Inflicts 'shadow element' attack to one enemy constantly. High 'critical rate'. *Blood Curse - Curse enemies nearby, slows movement speed and absorbs enemy's blood. *Fire Offering - Burns enemy's body. *Pain Overture - Gets hurt on purpose to increase mana. Deems that enemy inflicted damage. *Summon Hellfire - Covers large areas with flames and attacks. *Spell Redemption - Increases both the skill's mana usage and damage. Secondary *Hell's Pawn - Summons the 'pawn of hell'. *Summon Bard - Summons 'bard'. Increases Warlock's physical and magic damage resistance. *Monster's Scream - Hell's pawn screams to stun and damage everything nearby. (Gets Aggro) Passive *Mage's Claw - The pawn of Hell's attack recovers the Warlock's MP. *Blood Revenge - Damage increases when you, your pet, and/or part members are attacked by enemies. *Bard of Destruction - Attack rate increases when 'bard' is summoned. *Blade of Darkness - Warlock's magic damage increases. *Blood Feast - Increases the damage of the blood curse, and transfers 'vampire effect' to all party members. *Lightning of Hell - Hits lightnings to target for a certain chance when critical is activated. Tips, Tricks & Tactics Optimal DPS from a Warlock is via usage of Blitzing, aka 'the Warlock's Dance'. Using this efficiently will easily make up for any deficiency in terms of stats / skills / items - the sheer output of attacks will make stats nearly irrelevant, outclass any potential damage done by skills, and make even the basic starting staff a highly powerful weapon. See more at the section above named Blitzing. That being said, stats, skills and items should NOT be ignored. Stats still influence damage & skills, skills still have utility uses and can increase damage done to great extent, and weapons still determine the base damage done before any modifiers / multipliers. Stats: Blitzing build: Some stats, like STR and DEX, are worthless with the Warlock - they don't use melee weapons at all. While INT and MEN increase damage done slightly with auto attacks, and act as multipliers for skills, they are dwarfed due to the sheer power of Blitzing. Therefore, it may be worth investing stats in only VIT, which becomes a real issue later on in the game, where many bosses can easily OHKO or two hit you / your allies. But if you use a tank, that's a whole different story. Still, to max out damage, Full INT stat-adding is strongly reconmended. Non-blitzing build: If you have issues in efficiently applying the Blitzing technique, then you should keep increasing the VIT and the INT stats, building INT majorly (and of course, VIT minorly), along with dices roles (only keep the changes if they don't reduce MEN, INT, or VIT). While MEN also increase the basic damage and skill damage, the skill damage furthermore increase if you build INT instead of MEN. All skills' damages calculating formula would actually have the INT point multiplied by 1.2, while having the MEN at only 1.0. Although the difference seems insignificant, further damage build-up with passive skills can create a great difference. Skills - Blitzing build: Due to Blitzing, some skills become obsolete - Touch of Agony, Fire Offering and Summon Hellfire only do damage, and Spell Redemption merely increases it; all of these skills are outclassed due to the aforementioned strategy. However, other skills still have some usage via the utility they bring. The main gems of a Warlock's skills are the Passives. Half of them directly increase damage done by a notable amount, and the other half provides buffs to active skills. Blood Revenge at its maximum is the single biggest skill based damage buff in the game: either 67% damage increase if you consider it to be a linear stacking buff, or 91.3% damage increase if considered to be a exponentially growing buff. It works by adding a buff that can stack on itself, increasing damage done if attacked by an enemy. This can be combined with Pain Overture, which proc's Blood Revenge and can be cast faster than Blood Revenge expires, resulting in indefinite extension of Blood Revenge when necessary at the cost of health. Blade of Darkness is a flat and permanent buff to all damage done. At max, it boosts damage done by 12.5%. Lightning of Hell is effectively a seconhat proc's 13% of the time every time you crit. While this is normally a small chance, Blitzing makes crits occur much more often, resulting in even more damage done. Blood Curse may be useful when being chased by crowds of enemies or when they are too fast to be kited (hit & run) while Blitzing. Blood Curse may also be used to heal (to a minor degree, unless hitting many enemies simultaneously). Blood Feast can be used to boost Blood Curse, if you enjoy spamming it. Hell's Pawn isn't very useful by itself; the damage is minor compared to a Blitzing Warlock, and any attempts to use it as a meat shield is negated by the sheer damage output by the Warlock, which will invariably attract the enemy's attention. It's only useful for Monster's Scream, which if maxed, can be spammed to cause periodic stunning (at the cost of rapid mana depletion). Summon Bard can be useful if you find yourself being attacked a lot & taking lots of damage. That being said, relying solely on Bard for damage negation isn't wise, due to its large downtime and relatively small protection against being swarmed / a boss's huge damage output. Can also be used for Bard of Destruction, which boosts all damage done when Bard is active. Skills - Non-blitzing build: With the right build, Warlock's skill hits are the strongest among the roles, with the strongest one-hit skills reaching the damage of 1,000 at level 16, and nearly 6,000 at level 43, which barely any roles can reach. The main skills you need to upgrade are the primary attacking skills and the passive damage-buff skills. Items: Considering that stat boosts are irrelevant, it is best to optimize items for maximum defense rates or damage done. Wear whatever provides the most damage reduction or health increase, and use whatever weapon does the most damage, whether it be staff or orb - attack rate is irrelevant. The differences between orb and staff are: orb gives you 10% critical rate , staff gives you 4% critical rate and 8% hit rate, and the orb provides a higher damage because when wearing orb, each INT stat point gives you more damage than the staff. Gallery Category:Starter Class